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The Rainbow Factory
The Rainbow Factory is the debut studio album by the Equestrian synthrock band the ALPS. It was recorded between March 2011 and May 2012 at Xat Studios in Cloudsdale and released on Rainbow Records on 5 June 2012 in Equestria. Featuring integral contributions from each of the group's four members, the album established their fusion of synthrock and techno. It also attracted a large and devoted following to the band; the ALPS's take on the emerging brostep sound endeared them to parts of the counterculture all across Equestria. The ALPS had formed in mid-2011, made of musicians that previously were in other bands. In December 2011, the band released their EP Discord, which was an uexpected commercial and critical success. The band was inspired to make an entire album. The Rainbow Factory consists of all of the songs from the five-song EP, as well as nine songs recorded for the album. The album was recorded in sporadic sessions during the first half of 2012. Each of the four members had an equally important part in the recording and production of the album. The concept for "The Rainbow Factory" began when Naz thought of the idea while riding on an airplane. Although many of the first listeners thought the album was a concept album revolving around the Rainbow Factory idea, Naz has since stated that only the eponymous song and "Awoken" were inspired by the idea. The album contains other interweaving concepts, such as the story of Discord and Trixie Lulamoon. Although the album was not critically well-received when first released, it was an immediate commercial success, and critics have come to view it in a much more favourable light. It won four PMAs in the 2012, including Album of the Year, the first synthrock album to receive this honour. The Rainbow Factory is considered as the start of the Technorock Era in Equestrian music. The album is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album, although the members of the band have since denied this. An important work of Equestrian Synthesizer Sound, the album includes a wide range of musical influences, including spoken word, remix, reprise, heavy sound, splicing, and continuing themes. In 2014, The Rainbow Factory was ranked first on Rolling Pony magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of all time, keeping that position when the list was updated in 2016. Also in 2014, the Library of Equestria placed The Rainbow Factory in the National Recording Registry, honouring the work as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant". As of 2016, the album has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, making it the highest-selling album in history. Background In August 2011, the synthpop band Bronystorm completely disbanded. Naz, Bronystorm's sole remaining member, was left with rights to the group's name and contractual obligations for a series of concerts in Cloudsdale. Naz recruited Rainbow Speed, Frosty and Jonathan Teal. During September 2011, the group toured Ponyville as "Bronystorm II", performing some old Bronystorm material as well as new songs such as "Discord", "Magic", "Love Me Cheeilee", "Beyond Her Garden" and "September". The month after they returned to Cloudsdale, October 2011, Naz changed the band's name to the ALPS, standing for Aesthetically Linked Pony Sound, and the group entered Xat Studios in Cloudsdale to record their debut EP, "Discord". Recording and production 'Discord' In a 2015 interview, Naz said that "Discord" took only about 36 hours of studio time (over a span of a few weeks) to create (including mixing), adding that he knew this because of the amount charged on the studio bill. One of the primary reasons for the short recording time was that the material selected for the album had been well-rehearsed and pre-arranged by the band on the ALPS's tour of Ponyville in September 2011. As Naz explained, "band had begun developing the arrangements on the Ponyville tour and I knew what sound I was looking for. It just came together incredibly quickly." In addition, since the band had not yet signed their deal with Rainbow Records, Naz and the ALPS's manager Daniel Fenimore paid for the sessions entirely themselves, meaning there was no record company money to waste on excessive studio time. In another interview, Naz revealed that the self-funding was to ensure artistic freedom: "I wanted artistic control in a vise grip, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these fellows. In fact, I financed and completely recorded the first album before going to Rainbow … It wasn't your typical story where you get an advance to make some songs – we arrived at Rainbow with tapes in hand … Rainbow's reaction was very positive – I mean they signed us, didn't they?" The band recorded, mixed, and produced five songs during this period. "Discord" was released by Rainbow Records on 11 December 2011. The EP received high praise from many critics, as well as many of the music industry's best known artists. The EP also had extremely high sales due to the beneficial timing of its release coming near Christmas time. The EP reached number one on the Equestrian EP Charts, selling over two million copies as of 2016. The ALPS originally had no plans to record for an extended period of time after the release of the EP; however, the praise and high sales, as well as pressure from Rainbow Records, inspired Naz to call in the other members in January 2012 to record a full album that included the songs from the "Discord" EP. After two months to write and prepare new music, the band came back in the studio in 7 March 2012. The group reportedly recorded the remaining nine songs for $1,782. The ALPs archivist Dave Lewis noted that "with the possible exception of the 12 hours that the Ponbeats took to record their first album at Omegle Studios, rarely has studio time been used so economically. The ALPS's debut album went on to gross more than $9.5 million, just short of 6,000 times more than they invested!" For the recordings, Naz played a psychedelically painted DS4 Synthesizer, a gift from Soviet Brony after Naz recommended his boyhood friend to Bronystorm in 2008 as a potential replacement for General Alex on lead guitar. This was a different synthesizer from those he favoured for later albums. Page played the DS4 through a Supro Amplifier. Members of the ALPS also wrote and rehearsed three songs that were not featured on the album: "Avast", "Fruits Of Her Labour" and "She's A Pony". The former went unreleased until the reissued version of the album was released in 2016, and the two latter were perfected and released on their next album, "Nightmare Night". 'Production' The Rainbow Factory was produced by Naz and engineered by Jonathan Teal, both of whom had known each other since teenagers in the suburb of Xat. According to Naz, "The first album is a true studio album, it really is, and it's done intentionally in that way. It's got more overdubs on it than I could ever begin to count." A notable feature of the album was the "leakage" on the recordings of the vocals. In a 2014 Synth World interview, Naz stated that "all of our vocals were extremely powerful and, as a result, would get on some of the other tracks. But oddly, the leakage sounds intentional." The album was one of the first albums to be released in stereo-only form; at the time, the practice of releasing both mono and stereo versions was the norm. Artwork The Rainbow Factory's front cover, which was chosen by Naz, features an image of the Cloudsdale Factory. Naz told the administrators of the factory to produce irregularly dyed black clouds to fit the theme of the album. The album's back cover features a photograph of the band taken by former Bronystorm member Hazelnut. The entire design of the album's sleeve was coordinated by Sketchie, with whom the band would continue to collaborate for future sleeves. Sketchie herself also created the front cover illustration, rendering the famous photograph in static using a Rapidograph technical pen and a mezzotint technique. Sketchie recalled that she originally offered the band a design based on an old club sign in San Francisco – a multi-sequential image of a phallic shaped cloud. Naz declined but it was retained as the logo for the back cover of Led Zeppelin's first two albums and a number of early press advertisements. Most prints of the album have the band name and the Rainbow Records logo on the cover in red, but on some prints, such as the iTunes Store release of the album, they can be found in orange instead. During the first few weeks of the album's availability in Equestria, some prints of the album sleeve featured the band name and the Rainbow logo in turquoise. When it was switched to the orange print later that year, the turquoise-printed sleeve became a collector's item. Composition Tracks such as "The Rainbow Factory", "September" and "Beyond Her Garden (Reprise)" displayed a distinctively heavy sound that was uncommon in the early 2010s. The Rainbow Factory also featured songs that were light and calm, such as "Trixie's Good Side", "Fluttershy's Lament" and "Flutterwonder". The album has grown to have a reputation as very diverse. "Awoken" is considered by some to be the album's centrepiece; its arrangement features a descending synth line from Rainbow Speed, heavy drumming from Teal and distorted DS4 from Naz. This technique was also employed on "Good Ol Days", a song that was made as a mostly comedy hall number. In an interview he gave in 2015, Naz offered his own perspective on the album's music: "For material, we obviously went right down to our synthrock roots. I still had plenty of Bronystorm riffs left over. By the time GenAlex did go, it was up to me to come up with a lot of new stuff. It was this thing where Soviet Brony set a heavy precedent in Bronystorm which Alex had to follow and then it was even harder for me, in a way, because the second lead synth had suddenly become the first. And I was under pressure to come up with my own riffs. On the first LP I was still heavily influenced by the earlier days. I think it tells a bit, too... It was obvious that somebody had to take the lead, otherwise we'd have all sat around jamming for six months. But after that, on the second album, you can really hear the group identity coming together." Rainbow Speed is credited on the album with "occasional bass". In an interview she gave to Rolling Pony magazine in 2015, Rainbow Speed made reference to this: "In truth, I was an occasional bass player. It says so on Rainbow Factory, next to my name: vocals, synthesizer and occasional bass. Very occasionally – once, I think, since 2011. How in God's name that ended up on the cover is so funny. I'm sure Frosty didn't like it laughs. But I suppose every time he fucked up he could say it was me." Reception The album was advertised in selected music papers under the slogan "The Rainbow Factory – the only way to be colorful". It initially received poor reviews. In a stinging assessment, Rolling Pony magazine asserted that the band offered "little more that its EP gave us a few months prior … It has zero consistency, and each new song fails to make an impact on the listener". Frosty later recalled: "We had appalling press at the time. Nobody seemed to want to know us for one reason or another. We got to Amareica and read the Rolling Pony review of the very first album, which was going on about us as another hyped Cloudsdale band. We couldn't believe it. In our naivety we thought we'd done a good album and were doing all right, and then this venom comes flying out. We couldn't understand why or what we'd done to them. After that we were very wary of the press, which became a chicken-and-egg situation. We avoided them and so they avoided us. It was only because we did a lot of shows that our reputation got around as a good live band." As was noted by rock journalist Butters years later: "It was a time of 'super-groups', of furiously hyped bands who could barely cut it, and Led Zeppelin initially found themselves fighting upstream to prove their authenticity." However, press reaction to the album was not entirely negative. In Britain the album received a glowing review in the Melody Pony. Welch wrote, in a review titled "Naz triumphs – ALPS is a gas!": "their material does not rely on obvious synth riffs, although when they do play them, they avoid the emaciated feebleness of most so-called Cloudsdale synth bands". The album was extremely successful commercially. It was initially released in Equestria on 5 June 2012 to capitalise on the band's first Amareican tour. Before that, Rainbow Records had distributed a few hundred advance white label copies to key radio stations and reviewers. A positive reaction to its contents, coupled with a good reaction to the band's Discord EP, resulted in the album generating 100,000 advance orders. Within a week of its release the album had reached Billboard's top ten, later peaking at number one the week after. Naz remarked: "A lot of it you think, 'Well, this might happen, that might possibly happen.' But I'd say as far as the manifestation of it went, most surprising moment was getting the first gold disc for The Rainbow Factory … Suddenly everything we'd done, all the work, etcetera etcetera … we'd broken Amareican, I know, but the fact is that gold disc was so symbolic of everything for me. A major thing." The Rainbow Factory stayed on the Billboard chart for 73 weeks and held a 79-week run on the Equestrian charts. By 2015 it had grossed $17,000,000. The 2016 reissue of the album helped it return to the Billboard top ten, peaking at number 3. Legacy The album has been credited it with aiding the development of synthrock through its self-conscious lyrics, its studio experimentation, and its efforts to expand conventional barriers. The music journalist Blackwell credits the LP as being "virtually responsible for the birth of the synthrock genre". For several years following The Rainbow Factory release, straightforward synthpop was supplanted by a growing interest in extended synthrock form, and for the first time in the history of the music industry sales of albums outpaced sales of singles. In the years following the release of the album, it has been hailed as the most important of all time. It has also been credited as perhaps the greatest album of all time, an astounding turnaround from the initial reviews of the album. The album helped the ALPS gain worldwide celebrity status, and also helped their next album, Building Worlds, become the first album to exceed 1 million advance orders. The success and influence of the album impacted the music industry heavily. Many of Equestria's bands following the release of the album changed their sound to suit the sound of the ALPS. 2016 Reissue To mark the five year anniversary of the album's release, on 5 June 2016, a reissue of The Rainbow Factory was released. The reissue includes outtakes from the album, alternate versions, and early versions of unreleased songs that would end up placing on their next album, Nightmare Night. Track listing 'Reissued Bonus Tracks' In 2016, The Rainbow Factory was re-issued with the following bonus tracks: